The importance of showing up

It is often said that so much of achieving goals boils down to persistence and “showing up”.

Yesterday was my weekly morning hockey game and so I got up quite early, gathered my things and set out for a drive to the hockey rink. About halfway there, I realized that I had forgotten an important part of my equipment, so I considered just turning around and going home.

Why not, I thought to myself. I have about 100 other things on my mind anyway and a to-do list a mile long. Surely nobody at the game would miss me and of course I probably should be doing other things anyway. Things that seemed more directly relevant to my personal and business goals.

But I decided to go to the rink and see if I could borrow the needed equipment. So I got there, and as it turned out one of the two goalies for the game didn’t show up. So I was asked to be a substitute goaltender, which I enjoy doing and so I agreed. Since after all, I didn’t have all of my regular equipment anyways.

So by showing up, even though I had every excuse in the world not to – I was able to make the game happen and 15 other people got to play as well rather than having any empty net on one end (not very much fun).

But that isn’t all that happened.

After the game, another player who happened to be there unexpectedly came up to me to ask if I still do computer work for a living. (This is someone I hadn’t seen in years, but he remembered me from a prior time we worked together.) I told him that in fact I do. By the end of the day, I had connected with him and spent about an hour helping him resolve a lingering issue with his computer that he had been meaning to address for the past 2 months.

SHOW UP. Even when you don’t want to. Or you aren’t totally prepared. Or you have other things to do. Or you want to sleep. Or whatever else your excuses are.

SHOW UP. You never know who else will be there or who will miss you if you are absent.